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A PRAYER RUG 


Jessica Nelson North 









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Series of First Volumes: Number Five 


A Prayer Rug 



A 

PRAYER 

RUG 


9 


'essica 


^Welson ( ^Nortk 

i ’* 



CHICAGO 

WILL RANSOM 
1923 


0 opY 7 j 



Copyright 1923 by 


Will Ransom 



DEC 31 '23 i 


©C1A705547 > 
**9 V 


Permission to republish these poems has been kindly 
granted by The Measure, The Double Dealer, Sun¬ 
set, Ainslee's, The Lyric West, The Chicago Trib¬ 
une, The Chicago Evening Post, The Grinnell Re¬ 
view, Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, The Wave, 
Voices, and others. 




IN THIS BOOK 


A Prayer Rug 

An Old House 

Bulbs 

Boatman 

Ambmh 

Hunger Inn 

Thirteen 

The Exacting Mistress 

Sonnet 

Skavilane 

The Late Guest 

Remedy 

Bogie 

Trail's End 

Spring Comes to Chicago 
A Tragedy in Tapestry 
Lullaby 
Just So! 

Midway Lights 
A Frosty Night 
Dark Days 
The Marionette 
The Boulevard 
The Wages of Sin 
A Promise 
A Sumerian Cycle 
Herbs 

Midway Sketches 
First Autumn 

To the Man Who Loves Twilight 
The Sleeper 
Suddenly 
Under the Eaves 


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A Prayer Rug 


Into the gray warp of my life 
I have emblazoned heraldries, 

Pageants and lights and festivals 
With iridescent thread of dream. 

Nor will the lawless shuttle weave 
Into the gray warp of my life, 

Compass or comb or sacred urn 
Or any orthodox design. 

But still the wayward border burns 

With glorious imaginings 

And still the righteous stare and frown. 

Until the finished web at last 
Upon the common dust is spread, 

And on the wicked, radiant thing 
A shining penitent I kneel . . . 

Behold the gray warp that thou gavest me, 
Allah! 


7 


An Old House 


Ground pine and little ragged flowers, 

Y arrow, 

Bouncing Bet, 

Roses that straggle by her weathered door, 
Slow trail the hours, 

And sleeping wood-birds on the lintel narrow 
Twitter and fret. 

What is she doing there so long within ? 

The lintel is narrow and old 
And the door will not unclose. 

Ground-pine and yarrow and little ragged rose 
Scatter upon her sill your patient gold — 

Flies drone and spin, 

The wood-birds chatter, chatter and are bold. 

Perhaps with careful hands 

She sets to rights her faded little room, 

Shakes out the cloth upon the hearth 
Or plies a quiet broom. 

Perhaps — but it is still, still, 

And fine gray sands 

Sift through the casement, veil the drowsy sill, 
And the door will not unclose, 

Ground-pine, and yarrow, and rose. 


8 


Bulbs 


I am so full of a story I cannot tell — 

A knowledge barren of words. 

Something it holds of small, melodious birds 
Breast-deep in grass — 

It has to do with bulbs that start and swell, 

That burst, that say to the black earth, “ Let me pass ! ” 
I am so full of a story I cannot tell. 

If there could be a garden set with song 
With warm hearts beating in the musky earth, 

When all the roots began to stir and strain 
And April came with blade and spur again, 

What welcome birth 

Would leap from out a silence winter-long, 

If one could have a garden set with song! 


9 


Boatman 


Boatman leaning on your pole on the Secret River, 

Will you tarry for a soul who never knew a lover? 

She is very young and cold — her beauty makes me shiver. 
I will give you coins of gold to take her softly over. 


10 


Ambush 


Who would crouch with me at the fountain-head 
Of lost lakes in the dusk of rainy springs 
When the dark air is full of wheeling wings, 

And white on marshy shores, untenanted 
The ice breaks ? 

Who would follow the shining teal to bed 
Or green drakes in a thicket of rustling reeds, 
Where the wild rice sprouts from the thawing seeds 
And gulls wheel 
And the ice breaks, 

And the lone crane feeds by the fountain-head 
Of lost lakes? 


11 




Hunger Inn 


Waiter, waiter! 

The hour is late. 

Bring me love on a silver plate, 

Topped with green from the coolest springs, 
Garnished with kisses in golden rings, 

Warmed with laughter and spiced with tears, 
The love I’ve famished for all these years. 

“ We ’re just out of love tonight, Madam.” 

Then hasten, hasten, 

The moments pass. 

Bring me fame in a tall thin glass. 

Ice to clink with a tinkling sound. 

Mint leaves traveling round and round. 
Frothy bubbles to break and gleam, 

The heady draught of my headiest dream. 

“ The cellars are empty, Madam.” 


12 


But waiter, waiter, 

An hour is spent. 

Bring me a bowl of plain content. 

The good contentment we used to bake 
In a round brown bowl of an earthen make. 
Seasoned well with a housewife’s pride, 
Crispy crust and a soft inside. 

Not so rich as a finer dish, 

But hot and tasty as heart could wish. 

“ We can’t get the ingredients, Madam.” 

Your fare is poor and your service slow. 
Hungry I came. I ’ll hungry go. 

Perchance I may feed me further on. 

Bring me my wrap and I ’ll be gone. 

“ Just as you say, Madam.” 


13 


Thirteen 


Remember how you cut my hand that year? 

I held an apple steady 

You with your sharpened pocket-knife played Tell. 
Trustful I waited. Ready! 

The blow fell. 

Mother wept at the wound, but I was vain. 

You were my hero. You could do no wrong. 
Wakeful I lay at the window all night long 
Proud of the pain. 

I watched the dark woods tossing in the rain 
With pungent smell, 

And early morning coming down the lane. 

Strangers, almost, we meet. We lead our lives 
So far apart. 

We smile together at the things behind us, 

Apples and pocket-knives and scars that bind us, 
Sweet wounds of hand or heart. 

Thirteen ! And the wild lake, wind-driven, 

Woods sweet with rain 

And wet gray morning coming down the lane, 

And mother’s face that nothing under heaven 
Can buy for us again. 


14 


The Exacting Mistress 


Leap from this moonlit hill 
Into the moon. 

There to traverse a still 
And tideless sea, 

That I may know more soon your love for me. 

Or snare with silken trap 
A unicorn 
To munch at morn 
His sugar from my lap. 

Oh never, never woo 
With simple things 
Whereof I have no lack. 

Blossoms and sweets my lesser lover brings 
But you . * . 

Leap to the moon and back. 

Bring me a unicorn. 


15 


Sonnet 


As one who being sick has slept all day, 

Hearing the world beat out its vague refrain 
A restless rhythm in a restless brain, 

Music that comes and faints and will not stay — 
Hearing in dreams the careful nurses say 
Meaningless phrases in a tangled skein 
And wakes to find that it is night again 
And all his precious sunlight slept away — 

So faintly runs my life when you depart, 
Somewhere between a waking and a dream. 
Scarcely I feel the sickness in my heart. 

Aimless I go — a leaf upon a stream. 

The days are passed in dim and troubled light, 
And night, when it has come — is only night. 


16 


Skavilane 


Would you know the cliff now, 

The cliff called Skavilane? 

Could you find the way again 
Down its rocky face? 

Masking the stiff descent 

The ivy grows again 

Dipping and blowing like a fall of lace. 

Land-bird and lake-bird 
Nest under Skavilane 
Laying frail treasure 
In their swaying nests. 

Loud with their voices the old cliff rings again 
Proud of its noisy guests. 

Would you know the way now 
Over the edge again 

Steep-pitched and perilous to slow foot and hand ? 

Creeper and hanging bough 

Cloaking the ledge again 

And far, far under us 

Breakers on the sand. 


17 


The Late Guest 


A god is on her threshold. 

The light is growing dim, 

She bends above her needle. 

She will not look at him. 

“ Make haste and sweep the carpet 
And throw the windows wide! 

Hang every door with myrtle 
For I would come inside.” 

“Call the Four Winds to quench your smoky light. 
Let in, let in, the blue and starry night.” 

The god is on her threshold. 

She feels a chill surmise. 

She draws her shawl about her 
And will not raise her eyes. 


18 


Remedy 


You could not spurn me so 
That earth would not endure me, 

Nor bring my heart so low 
That summer could not cure me. 

A goldfinch on a spray 
Trills the warm hours away: 

“ Tra-lee, tra-lira-la! 

Love is a bubble. 

Never begin with it. 

What do you win with it? 

Nothing but trouble.” 

The humble clover 

Has been more true to me than any lover. 

I have laid me in despair 

On the hill-top praying that the dust might hide me. 
Her sunny head and fair 
The clover laid beside me. 

The rain has wept with me 
In silver agitation. 

The boughs of the linden tree 
Are heavy with consolation. 


19 


Bogie 


The black rain settles in our empty block. 

The drunken street-lamps leer with sidelong eyes, 
Dim and unholy. 

Old newspapers grown restless in the gutter 
With flap and flutter 
Rise and subside and rise 
It is half-past-twelve-o’clock 
The night-goes-slowly. 

I am awake again. I cannot sleep. 

I light the lamp again and draw the shutter. 

I light the lamp against the steps that creep 
The sounds that mutter. 

I draw the shutter against the lids that peep. 

Something goes crouching at the dripping flank 
Of the broken wall! Something in tatters slips 
Down alleys dank! 

Something from door to door before the rain 
Dodges and whines. Something with twisting lips 
Terribly smiles outside my shuttered pane. 


20 


Trail's End 


I ’ll have a home in the hill 
When the long snows begin, 

At the trail’s end 

When hunting moons are over. 

I shall have dreams for kin, 

Darkness for friend 

For priest the silence and the chill 

Earth for my lover. 

The blind mole will go by 
And the brown spider, swinging in her coil 
Will share the friendly quiet of my room. 
Earthworms will pass, 

And the pale roots of grass 
Will fringe the gloom. 

I shall forget the sky. 

If there should come a day 
In the midwinter thaw, 

When some lost rivulet of amber rain 
Or breath of sweet decay 
Should enter by mischance my dwelling-place 
And silently withdraw 

What if a memory, 

Some echo of your voice — dream of your face, 
Quickened the chords of pain? 

Then for your sake, 

Almost I should awake, 

But, having taken thought, should sleep again. 

21 


Spring Gomes to Chicago 


My heart has told me, breathing low 
How sunlit pastures after rain 
Comb out their silken slopes again, 

How marshland haunts we used to know 
Are purple where the violets grow. 

My traitor heart too well has told 
How in a garden that we knew 
The last pink crocus spills its dew, 

How sweet the hyacinths unfold 
And how the jonquils preen their gold. 

My heart has gone on homing feet 
To seek Wisconsin fields again 
Where robins steal the sprouting grain, 
Forgetting that it once held sweet 
This dingy wall and barren street. 

Oh chill gray city by the lake, 

Where now the cold gulls scream and soar 
And sullen waves against the shore 
Sullenly rise and loudly break, 

Much have I lost for your dear sake! 


22 


A Tragedy in Tapestry 


Nine and twenty cockatoos with green and yellow wings 
Once settled in a grove of roomy trees, 

Of grim and drastic, 

Prim, ecclesiastic, 

Respectable but gloomy trees 

Nine and twenty cockatoos, the vulgar, gaudy things! 
The branches shuddered at their horrid guests. 
Nuthatch and starling 
Fled from the quarreling, 

The turbulent and torrid guests. 

Nine and twenty cockatoos, whereof the poet sings 
Have settled on my stately antique chair — 

On the ultra-modern bolstering, 

The wretched re-upholstering 
Of this decorous, but frantic chair. 


23 


Lullaby 


It is a restless child, 

This vain love I bore him. 
Before cock-crow 
It wakens and is wild 
Clamoring for him. 

Hush and lullaby, 

Child in whom I hope not. 
Night is still in the sky 
And the dawn-flowers open not. 
Lullaby. 

Hush and give me peace. 

At my heart’s core wailing. 

It is unavailing. 

Cease! 

He will come no more. 


24 


Just So! 


At the day’s end and the small town’s beginning 
Was a yardful of white geese, clacking and spinning: 

“ Clack! Do you see the skies? 

They are loosely feathered 
Like a gander gray and old. 

“ Clack and the sun? It lies 
Fresh to be gathered, 

An egg in a nest of gold. 

“ An egg. 

Clack.” 


25 


Midway Lights 


I must be gone from this fair town 
Before my idols all are down. 

Since I have walked on autumn nights 
Along the Midway with its lights 
Where three by three and two by two 
They shine like globes of burnished dew, 
The moon may wax, the moon may wane, 
The moon can never charm again. 

Let me be gone from this fair town 
Before my idols all are down. 


26 


A Frosty Night 


Breath of the dying vines, 

That whistles and is still . . . 

The brazen moonbeams clang like coins 
On our window-sill. 

The earth with grief is big, 

Frost has stripped her of green. 

The harsh peak of a barren twig 
Tickles our screen. 

We should be up and forth, 

The air is white with death. 

A hand is stretched out of the north 
Stopping our breath. 


27 


Dark Days 


I cannot say I love you 
For I knew Love too well. 

He walked with golden sandals 
In fields of asphodel. 

He brought a sound of shaken bells 
To every quiet place. 

I cannot say I love you, 

For can Love change his face? 

The nights went by in glory — 

The waiting days were long. 

The sun came up with laughter. 
The moon went down in song. 

And if I say I love you, 

Then must I also say 

How Love wore rainbow garments 

That now like smoke are gray. 

The days go by in sorrow now 
A mist is on the land. 

The wild weeds at the water’s edge 
Trail black across the sand. 

There is no glory now nor sound 
Of any shaken bell. 

How can I say I love you 
When I knew Love so well ? 


28 


The Marionette 


And so you thought I was real. The glamour and light, 
The tinsel — the lovely color of flesh at night 
Fooled you somehow — 

You whom I thought the wisest and the best. 

I tried my glittering games with all the rest, 

But I never tried any tricks with you at least, 

You came when I did not call. 

And now 

You would take me forever to your warm young breast 
And I’m nothing — nothing at all! 

Nothing at all but paper and paint and gilt 
Moved about by a twitching thread or two. 

It’s a clever — it’s a painless way to be built, 

But I wish I were real, for you. 

I wish I could offer you hunger and love and pain, 

A heart with blood that could really, truly beat, 

Lips that were warm — your kisses would be so sweet. 

But I fade in sunlight. I dissolve in rain! 

Look! They’re pulling the string that makes me cry. 
Goodbye. 


29 


The Boulevard 


I remulous, lighted city, you seem to me, 

Only a bonfire, built by a nameless sea, 

Only a paling coal that the wind sets spinning, 

Lit by huddled tribes at the world’s beginning. 

Beating back the dusk for a little span, 

Brave and pitiful is the thing called Man — 

Man who swung in a perilous voiceless night 
Builds about him an echoing shell of light — 

Man who clings to his ever-slipping breath, 

Dreams him a God and laughs in the face of death. 


30 


The Wages of Sin 


God the Inscrutable 

Looked on complacently 

The while young Denison 

Slipped all his debts by a careful insolvency 

Broke his wife’s heart and ruined the serving-girl. 

But lobster salad 

And iced watermelon, 

That was too much for even a godhead. 

“ I ’ll smite him for that” 

Quoth God the Inscrutable. 

And the wretch died in torment 
At two in the morning. 


31 


A Promise 


Time will have its way, 

Time, patiently moving, 

Water in quiet weather 

Grinding together 

The hard stones of our loving. 

Sharp stones that now we tread 
With pierced ecstatic feet 
Time will make round and sweet. 

Some day 

Our lives that cried and bled, 
Will lie down together 
Like waves in quiet weather 
In a smooth, cool bed. 


32 


A Sumerian Cycle 


i 

After the rains a crescent of sweet grass, 

Bending toward Sumer. 

After the rains 

The green-white pool that ripples to the gourd, 
After black skies and walls of beaten clay, 

Thy arms, O Siva. 

II 

Tell me, O Soul, would any wise man say, 
Would any dreamer, loafing by his wine-skin 
Say 

That love like ours is not enough for him ? 

The little tree has dropped its ripest fig 
Into your bosom. 

III 

Incense twelve times breathed is a pain 
Keen to the nostrils. 

There is no help for us in all of Sumer, 

Though they should feast us, Siva, in every hall 
There is no help. The clear pool sickens 
To our throats. The grass is rooted 
In weariness. 


33 


IV 

Out of the south the nomads come like locusts. 
Sharp eyes in dusty faces, 

Sharp hooves of desert cattle, 

Their rags twitter in the hot wind 
Like locusts in the harvest. 

Shall we fear them, thou whom I see no longer 
For the veil of my surfeiting 
That has covered thy face? 

After the nomads 
The rains. 


34 


Herbs 


I give myself to you. My life I break 
Now to anoint your feet. 

Like costly spikenard opened for your sake 
My years are sweet; 

My aromatic years. And if their scent 
Trouble your wisdom, being hard to trace, 
Never inquire what herbs for them were blent 
In earlier days; 

Nor tremble if barbaric odors blow 
Across the quiet savor of our lot. 

Only the compound can concern us now. 

The rest is not, is not. 


35 


Midway Sketches 


i 

Along the Midway, hand in hand with me 
New Winter walks. 

Sweeter than rainy April is her breath, 

Promise of colder days when bleaker trees, 
Chiselled on copper skies 
Will point their parable. 

Delicately upon the fragile grass, 

Constrained, with level brows, 

Now on the Midway, hand in hand with me 
New Winter walks. 

II 

Consort of Gea, primal, enigmatic, 

Time stands above his pool, 

While all the dark and pitiable tide 
Of human life goes by. 

Pulseless, not to be moved by prayer, 

He stands. 

A storm blows in out of the ancient lake, 

And endlessly, 

Down Cottage Grove, the rattling traffic runs. 


36 


III 

Voices in darkness, footsteps on wet streets, 

Pass and repass, 

Hauntingly, irrevocably, 

Into the velvet nap of night. 

Why did you seek me, friends that I cannot see, 
Faces I never know? 

IV 

And look where Harper with horned towers, 
Encloses in its rugged Gothic skull, 

The swarming, the incredible, 

The many-faceted, the gamut-ranging, 

The Student Brain. 


37 


First Autumn 


All in our pearl-pale window 
The moon’s aroma hung. 

My love and I together 
Our heads upon one pillow, 

Looked out where the elm upflung 
A branch like a peacock feather. 

Heigho, first autumn weather! 


38 


To the Man Who Loves Twilight 

Why do you go along the street caressing with quiet eyes 
Gray walls, gray houses and the dull bleak skies? 

Have all things gray your blessing? 

We do not love your twilights, God and I. 

He pelts the rainy heaven 

With gorgeous Autumn — hangs the dripping trees 
With yellow apples of Hesperides in lines 
Sweetly uneven — 

Drapes every sodden fence with scarlet vines. 

And where you sit, 

Sufficient to yourself, hugging the gloom, 

I prance with rustling silk and candles lit 
To make an orgy in our quiet room. 


39 


The Sleeper 


Night: 

Oh heavy breather in the surf of sleep, 

What is that strange and rosy slenderness 

You hold against your heart with so much tenderness 


The Sleeper: 

It is my wife that I hold. 

I love her more than life. 

She has hair of bronze and gold 
And in twin strands divides it. 

It lies across her bosom surplice-wise 
This I know to be true 
Though darkness hides it. 

Night: 

Now all things false dissolve beneath the moon. 

This is a sheaf of whispering dreams you hold 
Bound by the tawny sinews of your arm. 

They nod together with plumes of bronze and gold, 

They breathe and are warm 

They speak together with a sibillant tune. 

The Sleeper: 

This is my own wife. 

Her mouth that is merry and wise 
Is shut and the lids are shut that cover 
Her faithful eyes. 


40 


Night: 

A sheaf of dreams — Hush! 

The First Dream: 

She is untrue, 

Brother and Brother. 

This one is new. 

Where is the other? 

The Second Dream: 

I have heard them say 
That he ceased to love her. 
Even today 

His voice can move her. 

The Third Dream: 

I laugh to remember 
How she wept on his breast. 
Now with the rest 
Is that hope an ember. 

The Fourth Dream: 

I have seen her tremble 
When she meets his eyes. 

She is deft with lies. 

She is quick to dissemble. 


41 


The First Dream: 

How is this done, 

Brother and Brother, 

To sleep with one 
And dream of another? 

Night: 

A sheaf of dreams — of dreams. 

The Sleeper: 

My wife 
My wife. 

My wife. 


42 


Suddenly 


We have a gray room. The walls are gray and bare. 
I have hung pictures and set flowers there. 

I have made curtains with wide and snowy hem 
For our little windows to make the best of them. 

You look at me. Your look is still and gray. 

Your look is dim and cool and far away. 

I cannot open the stubborn husks that shut 
Your heart away like a kernel in a nut. 

I am afraid of what is in your heart. 

I must probe deep. I must tear your mood apart. 
Suddenly like a rocket unaware, 

Your eyes blossom and flare. 


43 


Under the Eaves 


We have climbed so high that only the brave swallow, 
The swallow, nesting under the eaves as we nest, 
Dares follow. 

Oh, Lady Swallow, do you love your lord 
With a hard pain under your soft breast? 

Does your heart strain toward 

His going, his returning, without rest? 

He is vain. He preens and sings. 

Oh, Lady Swallow, do you know these things, 

Yet find in them no surcease of your yearning, 
Knowing also that no gift of berry or seed 
Could assuage your need 
Were his voice unheard? 

I have pity for you, little bird. 


44 


The Series of First Volumes 


1 — OPEN SHUTTERS Oliver Jenkins 

2— STAR POLLEN Power Dalton 

3 — ORIOLES AND BLACKBIRDS Hi Simons 

4 — FRINGE Pearl Andelson 

5 — A PRAYER RUG Jessica Nelson North 


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